My friend and mentor Malcolm Parry (former editor of
Vancouver Magazine, Western Living, Vista and now gossip and business columnist
for the VancouverSun) has a theory that he calls the privileged view. If you
are on the roof of a very tall building, it is privileged. If you are at ground
level looking up, you are not.

Anybody can purchase (if tickets are purchased before they
invariably sell out) for today’s Early Music Vancouver presentation of the
Handel oratorio Theodora in Seattle, tomorrow in Vancouver and Sunday in
Victoria. You might think that such an event is privileged. After all it is
difficult to boast that you will see Theodora in your lifetime as this oratorio
is not often performed. This is true.

True privilege is to witness two performances, within days
(statistically most unlikely) and even more privileged if one of them is a
dress rehearsal.

Such was my privilege yesterday Thursday at St. Andrew
Wesley on Burrard and Nelson. I must first define an Early Music
rehearsal.Nobody is wearing monkey
suits or black clothing. The dress part of the rehearsal means that the
performance will be done with almost no breaks (except for tuning or a breather
or two). One advantage to this is that the four solo singers are in their street
clothes, they do not look like would-be gods up on the stage but down-to-earth
(they even smile, used laptops and smart phones) humans.

Lawrence Zazzo, countertenor - Zachary Wilder, tenor

Sitting on the pew a mere four feet away you can enjoy their
talent in a refreshing new way. You can see them make a few mistakes and how
they laugh them off.

Since I was not confined to a designated seat at the Chan I
could move around and watch the natural horn players from the back. The
instruments with a big bell look like the bell is attached to a brass hula-hoop!

Andrew Clarke, Steve Desroche - horns

After attending many performances of baroque orchestras I
was able to quickly answer a question from one of the sweetest voices on CBC
Radio, Sheryl MacKay (North by Northwest). She wanted to know why one of the
cellos had such a thick neck. MacKay was there as she could not attend Saturday
night’s performance as she has to get up at four in the morning for her program
on Sunday. I told her that the cello in question was a violone which unlike the
cello has frets and is larger.

Soile Stratkauskas , flute

Watching and then listening to PBO Music Director’s few
instructions to his orchestra you come to the conclusion that the idea that
conductors can be bombastic is not often true. Alexander Weimann does it all with
piano subtlety and very good taste. I saw some of his expressions by depositing
myself behind and looking through the legs of the central male chorus (the
sopranos stage right, the altos stage left). I was flummoxed by one male standing with the female altos. I asked and I was told that he is a countertenor. Sometimes they are called male altos. The singers are the Vancouver Cantata Singers. Weimann can smile ecstatically but it was also fun to be as close to Weimann’s back. From that vantage point I
could see the constant smiles of delight on lute player Konstantin ﻿R.﻿ Bozhinov. Although Bulgarian he speaks a perfect Queen's English so he must find Weimann's German accented English cute.

Alexander Weimann

While the church was mostly empty (I was one of the few
lucky ones) I understood that the acoustics were excellent. Not knowing about
sound I will have to ask violinist Paul Luchkow who is also a sound engineer if
the Chan can reproduce the reverberation of a large church. A few of the
beautiful stained glass windows were lit by being next door to the church
chapel. The surrounding of the wooden church pews all added to my delight of
the occasion.

But in the end it was watching the solo singers, up close
that made my evening a memorable one.

If you think that singers such as these can be boring in
real life I can provide the evidence to the contrary with the example of
mezzo-soprano Kristina Szabó dressed in a little black skirt, black tights,
black almost knee-high boots, a brown leather jacket of a most complex manufacture,
dramatic eye shadow – all the very image of the lead singer of that iconic Hungarian punk band of the past, the Puskás Dribble.

I have a Hoover vacuum model SH40060 which I purchased at
London Drugs about two years ago here in Vancouver. I asked the store manager
if I could plug in some of the vacuums to test their noise level. The Hoover
while not all that silent, did not have a high frequency whine.

Since that purchase I have come to believe that the
intentions to design this vacuum might have been good but the end result is a
terrible contraption which at my age (72) makes me wonder if I have to spend,
yet again on a new one.

My repeated complaints to your on line service have only
gotten me, “These are the sevice centres near your area.”

The Hoover has these design problems:

1.When you lift the vacuum, to perhaps pass it
over stairs the gaskets give way and the machine loses sucking power.

2.The plastic hose has a memory so it twists all
the time. One has to un-twist it.

3.Because of 2 and because the wire leading to the
motor in the revolving carpet wand is in that hose the motor now works
intermittently.

4.When you remove the carpet sweeping wand to use
one of the two accessories a plastic mold within the wand falls out.

5.The brush accessory is hard to put away or
remove. I have arthritis. The corner accessory is much too loose and falls out.

6.Cleaning this vacuum is a real chore and one
must be diligent to notice if the cyclonic action is indeed turning or blocked.

7.The retractable chord retracts all the time when
one does not want it to. Pulling out to make sure it stays out involves many
attempts.

8.I know it must be some Canadian law (so that
vacuums can only be used in small condos and not in homes) but the power chord
is simply not long enough.

9.I have had many cases of putting the hose in its
place on the flimsy grab on the back. Then as I carry the vacuum up the stairs
for storage in one of the closets I find myself holding the dust container
while the rest of the unit falls down the stairs.

In short this unit is one of the
worst vacuums I have ever owned. I plan to save up enough money when this unit
finally goes to its maker in the dump, and buy a better designed vacuum for
which I might get some satisfaction.

Sincerely yours,

Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

I received an immediate response to the above which consisted of a pleasant man directing me to my closest authorized service centre.

One of Handel's most loyal and enthusiastic supporters,
Mary Delany, wrote to her sister Ann saying "Don't you remember our snug
enjoyment of "Theodora?" Her sister replied "Surely
"Theodora" will have justice at last, if it was to be again
performed, but the generality of the world have ears and hear not".

A nasty Roman emperor tells a Christian virgin that unless
she renounces her faith she will be executed horribly. He further tells her
Roman soldier companion the same thing.They both refuse and die together.

A nasty Roman prefect tells a Christian virgin that unless
she renounces her false Christian god she will be sent to a brothel. She
refuses. While men lick their lips deciding who will be first, a Roman soldier
comes to the rescue. The Christian virgin dresses in his clothes and he in
hers. He is caught. Both decide to die together.

These similar plots are centuries apart. The former, from
the 1942 novel The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas became the basis for the first ever,
1953, Cinemascope film TheRobe, with Gene Simmons and Richard Burton and the
wonderfully horrific and cruel Caligula played by Jay Robinson. I saw this film
with my parents in Buenos Aires in 1953. The inspiration for the book came from
the question, “What happened to the soldier who at Christ’s crucifixion won His
clothes (the very red robe) in a game?

The latter plot written by librettist Thomas Morell for
Handel’s oratorio Theodorawhich was performed
for the first time at Covent Garden in 1750.

In my personal obsession to find links the only one I could
find was an ecclesiastical on. Thomas Morell was a Garrison Chaplain at
Portsmouth barracks in 1775 and Lloyd C. Douglas was a minister. Interesting
for those who are Early Music Vancouver and Pacific Baroque Orchestra fans is
the fact that Morell wrote the libretto for the August, 7, 2014 performance (an
EMV production with the PBO) of Handel’s Il Trionfo del Tempo (1707).

Former Artistic Director of Early Music Vanocouver (now –
Artistic Director Emeritus Early Music Vancouver) the Birkenstock man from Curaçao
has this to say of Handel’s Messiah when I asked him to answer the question,
“Why Bach?”

L

et me step on some
toes with this one. Here goes: The simple answer is, "Bach? Of
course!" My background in the European tradition that focuses on Bach
rather than the Messiah around Christmas and Easter still has an impact. The
powerful Mengelberg tradition of the Matthew Passion with the Concertgebouw
Orchestra, for example ("early music" of a different kind!) kept
people huddled around the radio on Palm Sunday, and the streets were deserted.
Not to offend anyone; there's of course nothing wrong with Messiah — but
personally I would rather sit through the Passions or the Christmas Oratorio on
hard pews in acold church (as I have
done many times) than hear another Messiah in a comfortable concert hall.

This brings us to my belief that the Oratorio Theodora is
the intelligent (you may say sophisticated if you like) Handel work to like. It
is rarely performed although Handel himself had a personal preference for it.
Both Handel and Morell were ahead of their time with this oratorio that is
sometimes performed as an opera. It was around the time of the French
Revolution, 1789 that the so called “rescue operas” became popular. The trend
culminated with Beethoven’s Fidelio.

In the picture illustrating this blog you can see baroque
bassist (Portland Baroque Orchestra) Curtis Daily posing by the EMV poster on
41st Avenue. It features my English Rose Rosa ‘L.D. Braithwaite’ a
red rose appropriate for the Valentine Day’s performance of Theodora.

Over lemon cake and tea, Daily told me that Theodora has an
absolute killer aria in the first act. This means that unlike Messiah we do not
have to wait until the end for the best.

Now for the bad news which are not so bad if you have a
vivid imagination. In an oratorio the singers dress formally and in an opera
version they would be in costume. This means that in Saturday’s Theodora you
will have to imagine that Theodora at some point dresses as a man and Didymus, her
manly saviour, as a woman. Consider that I was not able to find one single
image of that cross dressing feat in all of Google!A double double bass date

Forty seven years ago Rosemary Healey married Jorge
Alejandro Waterhouse-Hayward in a civil ceremony in Coyoacán, Mexico. We had
attempted to marry at least six times but the judges told us they had no
permission to marry two foreigners. Finally I got the message and contacted the
judge in Coyoacán and presented him with a bottle of expensive cognac.

We could, we did and we regretted it - certainly not our
decision to marry 47 years ago. We regretted today my suggestion that we should
belay our daily morning ritual (now in effect for about 15 years) of breakfast
in bed with our NY Times and the Vancouver Sun. I told Rosemary that we might
celebrate by going to the buffet breakfast at the River Rock Casino in
Richmond.

We drove to Oakridge and parked. We walked to the Skytrain
and got off at Brighouse Station. We faced a long lineup. We finally made it.
We were taken to a table with a view of Fraser River, a cement factory and ugly
barges. This view in spite of it all must be one of the ugliest in town.
Somehow the cement towers hide the mountains. Over the din of the talking we
could hear some heavy drumming (not Japanese drumming but close) – no soothing
music.

Until we
left we watched many a person of extreme girth pass us by with a smile on
his/her face with a plate piled with psychedelic red lobster. A couple of extremely
large Lebanese Christian men had multiple trips to the lobster counter.

The man
who makes omelets told me that on good days (I have no idea what he meant by good) he made over 500 of them between
6am and 2pm plus he used up 25 liters of waffle mix. The omelet was good.
Nothing else was. The bacon was limp the sausages were tasteless and the
desserts were mostly the ones you might find at an oriental bakery. The roast
beef was par-boiled.

There
are no waiters. Those who work there are bussers who must remove from each
table countless plates half-filled with food. We wondered in what level Dante
might have put the kitchen which I would imagine would be hell on earth.

It would
seem to me that Las Vegas could teach the River Rock a few lessons on how to
properly serve a buffet.

Watching
all those people gobbling up their food I began to almost understand the fact
that my Rosemary has hidden her eating disorder for so many years. Before we
came to Vancouver I was ignorant to my dyslexia and in the family we all said
Rosemary ate like a little bird. It has been the reality of living in Vancouver
that has clued us in to all sorts of syndromes we had no idea existed.

Tomorrow
morning we will resume our breakfast-in-bed routine. After so many years I
still recognize how romantic and comforting it is and that the word routine, in
this case is not the appropriate one.